Kickstart Success with G&T 101: NYC's Premier Gifted & Talented Exam Prep Program

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G&T 101 is the best way to prepare your child for the OLSAT section of the gifted & talented entrance exam. 

Read why on our blog

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More On The Gifted Talented Program…

Many parents can detect “giftedness” before their child turns three years old. Other families frequently miss the “signs” of giftedness and attempt to enroll their child in a mainstream pre-school program. After a short period of time, (sometimes a day), some parents suddenly realize that their child is “different” from their peers.

His/her academic performance surpasses most, if not all, of their other classmates. “Seasoned” or experienced pre-school teachers will also recognize these characteristics. Hopefully, they will contact you and ask for a meeting to discuss your child’s needs. This is when the “search” begins… looking for a program or school in New York City that will give your child what he/she needs.

Until a gifted child reaches kindergarten, FasTracKids provides classes or private tutoring sessions to help supplement or replace his/her mainstream pre-school program. Enrichment tutoring or class sessions can be up to three hours in duration.

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Gifted Talented Program Admissions Process

1. The admissions process for children ages 3 – 4 years old includes
   1. IQ testing
   2. Classroom observation
   3. Interview
2. Five year old or kindergarten students undergo the same admissions process as our 3-4 year olds or submit a letter from his or her gifted talented program school teacher. (You can also provide test results from NYC OLSAT, NNAT2 or ERB Testing)

• Our IQ tests for children have been developed by experienced psychologists
• The test runs up to 40 minutes.
• The test includes 40 multiple choice questions.
• Each question has between 2 and 8 answer options with one correct answer.

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• Language skills
• Visual spatial skills
• Mathematical Ability
• Logical Ability

The classroom observation session and interview process will be scheduled to determine if the student is a proper fit for the gifted talented program.

The student applicant must actively engage for 15 minutes (with or without a parent) in FasTracKids class.

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Gifted Talented Program Details

FasTracKids holds gifted talented program classes after-school, over school vacations, and on weekends. We also run them throughout the summer. There are two semesters of our gifted and talented program per academic year.

The school year begins in September and ends in June. The summer gifted talented program runs for July and August.  All classes run for two hours, once a week. One missed class makeup per semester allowed.

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Gifted Talented Program FAQs

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1) Ensure that your child experiences a rich and stimulating life outside school.

This could include:

• Opportunities to play and learn with other gifted children, older children and adults who have similar interests and can stimulate their imagination, offer new experiences, and challenge them with new areas of learning.
• Lots of first-hand experiences, including visits to museums, zoos, galleries, musical performances and drama, film, outdoor exploration, keeping and studying pets, nature walks, and gardening.
• Providing opportunities for hobbies that offer depth of new learning, for example, collecting rocks, stamps, chess, photography, movie making, astronomy and animation.
• Introducing them to varied ways to respond to learning or present knowledge (e.g. creative arts, drama, video and audio presentations, public presentations etc).

2) Provide opportunities for children to extend their knowledge in areas of special interest.

This might include:

• Project-based work
• Library research
• Digital Storytelling
• Webquests
• Learning a musical instrument
• Learning a new language

3) Introduce a variety of enrichment activities at regular intervals

While it isn’t possible for any teacher or parent to offer individual activities for gifted children, there are many wonderful activities that all children enjoy which can also accommodate the needs of the gifted.

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There are two main approaches to meeting the needs of the gifted.

a)      Acceleration – This involves allowing students to complete curriculum faster, or advance through school more rapidly, based on their readiness, motivation and capability.  It allows the pace of instruction to be adjusted to meet their needs and, it offers new more appropriate challenges.

b)      Enrichment – This involves the modification of the curriculum to allow gifted learners to explore topics in greater depth of breadth, to permit the use of varied skills and generally to promote a higher level of thinking, investigation and exploration.  It often involves integration of varied learning areas, creative outcomes and products, and the use of supplementary materials beyond the normal range.

FasTracKids offers children both approaches with accelerated enrichment in the following 11 areas for a total of 88 lessons:

• Biology
• Technology
• Literature
• Math
• Natural Science
• Communication
• Creativity
• Earth Science
• Astronomy
• Speech, Drama and art
• Economics

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If you live with a gifted child or have one in your class there is a good chance you will begin to recognize a number of characteristics that tend to differentiate them from most children, even most capable children.  While many parents feel their children are gifted purely due to their observations of the pace of their development in the early preschool years, extreme giftedness is much more rare.  While some teachers tend to assume that gifted children can take care of themselves and so require less attention, this can be a dangerous assumption.  Life for the highly gifted child can be an extremely frustrating, confusing and at times lonely experience if their giftedness isn’t identified and supported.  If your child demonstrates, to a significantly greater extent, a large number of the following characteristics, they may be gifted and will need support, encouragement and some adaptation by teachers and parents:

• The ability to invent or create novel or original things, or look at their world in unusual ways.
• The desire and ability to investigate their immediate world, to see the unusual and observe things that others don’t notice.
• Extreme curiosity demonstrated by experimentation, investigation and in depth study.
• Using extended vocabulary, complex sentence structure and varied language forms.
• Understanding and using imagery and metaphorical language at a young age (often under 5 years).
• Exploring varied interests often at depth, well beyond their years.
• Being able to learn rapidly and easily compared to other children.
• Gaining great pleasure and excitement when they are learning new and difficult things.
• Outstanding memory demonstrated by encyclopedic recall.
• A desire to spend time with older children or adults and to learn with and from them.
• Being able to cope with the introduction of many new ideas. Sometimes simultaneously.
• Wanting to spend large amounts of time learning about a favorite topic
• Capable of generating many solutions to verbal or mathematical problems.
• Enjoying and seeking out frequent intellectual challenges
• Demonstrating unusual imagination that is stimulated easily and sometimes independently.
• Ability to generate multiple ideas and solutions to problems.
• Showing preparedness to question assumed knowledge or ways of doing things.
• Often preferring individual work rather than group work and able to work well independently.
• Demonstrating a highly mature and unusual sense of humor.
• Sometimes having expectations of themselves that are too demanding and unrealistic.
• Demonstrating single-mindedness and extreme determination when pursuing interests.

If you think about the above characteristics it should be easy to see how they might well be misinterpreted by teachers and parents who don’t understand giftedness.  For example, wanting to work independently could be seen as anti-social, single-mindedness can be seen as self-focused, questioning the assumed knowledge of the teacher could be seen as rudeness and so on.  This is why the gifted need to be understood and supported; they are different.

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Why does my child need G&T 101?

This class has so much to offer to each and every child that it should be mandatory for all of our children!

FasTracKids can do three very unique things for your child!

1. Raise a child’s I.Q. – up to 30 points.
2. FasTracKids’ enhancement of your child’s growth in education, assertiveness, critical- thinking, and communication skills compliments their schooling perfectly!
3. With FasTracKids, the transition into a highly successful public or private school education is virtually guaranteed for your child.

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How do we do it?

We know that 80% of brain development is complete by age 8, 50% by age 5. This is the crucial window of opportunity for maximum cognitive development in all human beings. Our research based programs are based on “educational zigzagging” in which subject matter is addressed in many different ways. Our interactive whiteboard Learning Station combined with hands on experiments and projects creates a multi-sensory learning experience which has been proven to improve a child’s learning capability.

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G&T 101 is a fun-filled learning adventure for your child! With multi-sensory learning techniques and interactive technology, FasTracKids develops key learning skills such as critical thinking, creativity, communication and collaboration with the goal to prepare the whole child for school and for life.

Specifically designed for children between the ages 2 through 6, FasTracKids encourages creativity and brain development by taking advantage of your child’s most productive intellectual years.

G&T 101 increases vocabulary as well as social behavior 100% – 150% faster than peers, while school performance improves 1-2 grades.

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Benefits

• FasTracKids’ enhancement of your child’s growth in education and communication skills complements your child’s schooling perfectly!
• With FasTracKids, the transition into a highly successful public or private school education is virtually guaranteed for your child!

How do we know it works?

Independent research by Wellesley College found that children enrolled in FasTracKids increased their expressive and receptive vocabularies as well as social skills such as cooperation, leadership, responsibility, empathy and self-control at a rate 100% to 150% faster than their peers not enrolled in FasTracKids. School-aged children in the study improved a minimum of one grade; some as much as two grades!

FasTracKids centers are in over 50 countries and our programs are taught in over 15 languages.

Over 93% of our graduates over the past 10 years, who start the program at age 3 years old, get accepted into NYC gifted & talented programs each year.  Over half of these children are accepted into city-wide programs!

Further reading: Research by Wellesley College

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